THE GETTYSBURG CAMPAIGN

(Gettysburg) Tuite, Thomas P. SOME WORK OF NO BOUNTY, NO PENSION STATE TROOPS IN THE GETTYSBURG CAMPAIGN, 1863. NY: Allied Printing, December 24, 1925. First edition. Printed broadside, 16 x 9 11/16 inches, three columns of dense text, reviewing the ill treatment of those volunteers who answered the emergency call for volunteers when Lee's second invasion of the North was discovered, including an account of services rendered (e.g., quelling the ensuing New York City riots) and neglect, no bounty to start, no pension for service, no medal as authorized shortly after the conflict; signed in type by the author, a veteran of the 74th N.Y. Infantry, at the end. Not recorded on OCLC. Folded, a very good copy.

Several excerpts:

" While in pursuit of Lee on his retreat from Gettysburg, some of the New York regiments were ordered back to New York City to rescue it from the burning, looting and murdering of the most devilish gang of guerrillas and cutthroats ever gathered together in an American city. They hung the negro and the uniformed Union soldier on the same lamp post. but their crowning crime was to set fire to a colored orphan asylum and when children escaped from the fire, to cast them back alive into the burning mass."

"In appreciation of their promptness in responding to the President's emergency call, and under the "no bounty" proviso, our government awarded these state troops a special honor medal. This medal is still due them."

"The short and spirited defense of the Wrightsville bridge over the Susquehanna River, and its destruction to prevent its use by the Confederates, was one of the severest blows to Lee in Pennsylvania. This was done by Pennsylvania State troops alone. This action may have changed the tactics of the whole campaign."

"The few of these neglected veterans still living are aged and in need. and this committee respectively suggests that to whatever pension law there may be enacted in this Congressional session, or which may continue in force as it is, there be added a provision, "That the several state troops enrolled under the President's Emergency Call for troops in June 1863, who participated in the campaign to repel the invasion of Pennsylvania and who were honorably discharged from the U.S. Service after the defeat of such invasion, be considered as having served the full three months for which they had been originally ordered under arms." The adoption of this, or some such rule, will give these long neglected veterans the right to apply for a pension with the same protection as have their comrades of the Civil War who are justly receiving pensions." 

"We the Committee do not ask this pension consideration as a matter of charity. We believe it is our honest due for faithful and valuable services rendered our government when it was in great need and surely pressed, and that its granting will be but a small matter in the righting of a wrong long done deserving Civil War  veterans by our government, indeed we feel that justice would call for back pensions for all the years it has been denied us. We have patiently borne this neglect for more than sixty years and now that age and our needs compel us, we respectfully ask of our government a fair consideration of the facts here presented, all of which can be verified by the Civil War records, believing as we do that the true American mind will do us justice even at this late day. But if not, then nature will soon close the account and according to law our government will then give us a little white marble headstone telling that we really were loyal soldiers in 1863."